Emily Young was born in London into a family of writers, artists, politicians and adventurers. Her grandmother was the sculptor Kathleen Scott, a colleague of Auguste Rodin and widow of the explorer Captain Scott of the Antarctic.

As a young woman, Emily Young worked primarily as a painter, having studied briefly at Chelsea School of Art, Central Saint Martins London, and Stonybrook University, New York. She left London in the late 60s, and spent the next years living and /or travelling in the USA, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America and China. It was during these travels, whilst encountering an extensive range of cultures, that she developed her broad view of art and its history.

In the early 1980s Emily Young started carving in stone, raiding quarries and stone yards from all around the world. The primary objective of her sculpture is to bring out the natural beauty and energy of stone, including its capacity to embody human consciousness, to the fore. Her sculptures have unique characters due to each individual stone’s geological history and its geographical source.

Angel I, St Paul’s Churchyard, St Paul’s Cathedral

Her approach allows the viewer to comprehend a commonality across time, land and cultures. Her constant preoccupation is our troubled relationship with the planet, which underscores her studio practice. In her combination of traditional carving skills with technology, she produces work which marries the contemporary with the ancient, manifesting a unique, serious and poetic presence.